Epilogue

Abstract

Ethnic differentiation, economic restructuring and the contraction and casualisation of labour markets, population ageing, the pervasiveness of violence and sexual abuse in family relationships and the risk of sexually transmitted disease are not new phenomena. However, they have achieved a heightened and particular salience in the context of the historical, economic, political and ideological conditions of the closing decades of the twentieth century. They are, individually and collectively, changing the face of social life in significant ways and are the source of wide-ranging contradictions, anxieties and conflicts. This text shows that these phenomena interconnect with, and reflect and shape, albeit in different ways, the ordering of gender, sexual and parental relationships. Further, in considering these apparently disparate phenomena together, this text reveals the extent and intensity of the cross-cutting pressures and challenges to which gender, sexual and parental relationships are subject. It shows that contradictions, ambivalences, anxieties and conflicts over the ordering of gender, sexual and parental relationships are central to the concern evoked by ethnic differentiation, labour market dislocation, population ageing, familial violence, sexual exploitation and AIDS.